Red

A sideways look at age, Colin McQueen - writer, Getting Older, Humour 2 Minutes
Photo by Anni Roenkae on Pexels.com

I have a red shirt that I rarely wear – even though I love it – because every single time I put it on, somebody is guaranteed to say, ‘That’s very bright… for you’ and it annoys the hell out of me.  It annoys me because it implies that I am normally dull; it annoys me because it implies that it would not be bright on anybody else, but mostly it annoys me because I can never think of anything deprecating to say about what they are wearing until about one millisecond after the moment has passed.  Anyway, the consequence is that I am often tempted to shroud myself in grey and I find that annoying because, quite frankly, I do not see myself as a grey person.  Even my hair has, so far, resisted that calling.  I see myself as sunshine – ok, with the odd scattered shower, but overall bright and warm – I see myself as an English summer garden before the frost sets in.  I am a haven of light, joy and peace, although I do require a lot of attention to stay that way.

I have always worn ‘colours’.  I consider myself a kind of proto-type Tellytubby.  I’m not the tallest, so over-busy patterns don’t always work for me, but bold colours do a wonderful job of pulling the eye of the beholder away from the jowls, and I do go for floral patterns.  I suppose I should have been gay really, but I failed the medical.

I have started to tone the colours down a little as I have got older – quite the opposite of many men of my age who retire from the sober, business suited life and passionately embrace golf and pastel colours with equal vigour – and my fabric hues are not quite as jarring as once they were.  Either that, of course, or my eyes are going.  I do wear white shirts from time to time – generally, according to my wife, when I am about to eat spaghetti Bolognese or finger-paint with the kids.  I never, of course – I am not a total idiot – wear anything white below waist level these days.  White trousers should be banned for the over fifties, unless playing either bowls or cricket, in which case they should either a) get a life or b) continue to play cricket.  White underwear is a disaster waiting to happen – I mean, it has never happened yet, but I can just sense it waiting.  I’m not averse to white socks, as long as they are worn with white trainers – although not too white.  It is impossible to wear white trainers past the age of twenty five without looking as though you are just trying too damn hard.  Mind you, I do have a pair of white trainers, they are tatty and stained and I should be ashamed of them, so I’m not.

I am of an age that doesn’t really consider trainers as shoes.  They are quite separate things.  Shoes have soles that are thinner than the upper.  They are made from something that looks like leather.  If you try to play football in them, the heel will fall off.  They are, in my case, either red, blue or green, and they are always very bright… for me.

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Published by colinmcqueen

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17 thoughts on “Red”

  1. If your hair has not turned gray yet it may not. Some people have a different..chromosome?..a thingy that’s different which prevents gray from happening. My mother would have killed for it. Presumably my brother and I got it from Dad. He was bald on top very young and what he had was what I call mousey. The strange thing was that when his hair (such as it was) grew back after chemo, it was black. He was 92 then. Wear your colours!

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  3. Nicely droll and self-deprecating. I agree with the idea of not wearing too much patterned attire. After the fifty year onwards waist expansion I only wear vertical stripes, never horizontal, and that’s not just because I have no love for Queens Park Rangers Football Club.

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  5. When I was a teenager and a young man I worked in a clothing store and was very aware of how I looked. Nowadays I realize the older I get, the less it matters. Well, in comparison to those days.

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  6. I have been known to hide behind grays during my ‘prime’ years. Now I wear whatever takes my fancy. Why should a colour be too bright “for you” and not them? Wear whatever you like. Red, magenta, yellow… As long as it makes you happy, who cares what they think! They don’t pay your bills, do they? (If your wife is not one of them, I didn’t say this. I am risk-averse.)

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